Department of Entomology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, 68583, USA.
Sci Rep. 2023 Oct 23;13(1):18127. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-44037-2.
For over a decade, beekeepers have experienced high losses of honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) colonies due to a variety of stressors including pesticide exposure. Some of these chemical stressors may residually remain in the colony comb and food resources (pollen and nectar) of failed colonies and be later re-used by beekeepers when splitting and building back new colonies. The practice of re-using comb from previously perished colonies (termed "deadout") is common in beekeeping practice, but its role in affecting colony health is not well understood. Here, we evaluate the impact of reused, pesticide-contaminated "deadout" combs on colony function during the process of replacing a queen bee. Queenless microcolonies were established to monitor queen rearing capacity in two treatment groups: (1) colonies given frames containing food resources from deadout colonies in control "clean" apiaries and, (2) colonies given frames containing "contaminated" resources from deadout colonies originating from apiaries experiencing chronic pesticide exposure from widespread systemic pesticide pollution (including neonicotinoid insecticides: clothianidin and thiamethoxam). Results indicate that colonies given pesticide-contaminated resources produced fewer queen cells per colony and had a lower proportion of colonies successfully raising a functional, diploid egg-laying queen. This research highlights the deleterious effects of re-using deadout combs from colonies previously lost due to pesticide contamination.
十多年来，养蜂人因各种压力源而经历了大量蜜蜂（Apis mellifera L.）蜂群的损失，包括农药暴露。这些化学压力源中的一些可能会残留在失败蜂群的蜂巢和食物资源（花粉和花蜜）中，并在养蜂人分蜂和建立新蜂群时被重新使用。从先前死亡的蜂群中重新使用蜂巢（称为“蜂群衰竭失调”）的做法在养蜂实践中很常见，但它对影响蜂群健康的作用尚不清楚。在这里，我们评估了在更换蜂王的过程中，重复使用受农药污染的“蜂群衰竭失调”蜂巢对蜂群功能的影响。建立了无蜂王的微型蜂群，以监测两个处理组中的蜂王育雏能力：（1）在控制“清洁”蜂场中，给蜂群提供来自衰竭失调蜂群的食物资源的框架；（2）给蜂群提供来自经历慢性农药暴露的蜂场的衰竭失调蜂群的“污染”资源的框架，慢性农药暴露来自广泛的系统性农药污染（包括新烟碱类杀虫剂：氯虫苯甲酰胺和噻虫嗪）。结果表明，给予受农药污染资源的蜂群每群产生的蜂王细胞较少，且有功能、二倍体产卵蜂王的蜂群比例较低。这项研究强调了重复使用因农药污染而失去的衰竭失调蜂巢的有害影响。
